1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a vehicle child safety seat and a shoulder pad attached to a seat belt of the vehicle child safety seat.
2. Description of Related Art
Japanese Patent No. 4796049 describes a shoulder pad attached to a shoulder strap (a shoulder harness) of a seat belt so as to make contact with a shoulder of an occupant (a child) sitting on a child safety seat. The shoulder pad is formed such that a body portion made from a hard elastic material and a hold member (a substrate) having a plurality of openings are sewn up, and the body portion is provided with a plurality of projecting portions projecting from the plurality of openings of the hold member. Among the plurality of projecting portions, a projecting portion that makes contact with a chest of an occupant is set to be higher than a projecting portion that makes contact with the shoulder of the occupant. Hereby, at an initial stage of an accident, a body of the occupant is allowed to be bent forward, thereby reducing a load applied on a neck of the occupant. Meanwhile, at a subsequent stage of the accident, the higher projecting portion reaches the shoulder of the occupant, so as to restrain an overall forward movement of a head of the occupant.
In the meantime, a shoulder pad described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2003-276559 (JP2003-276559 A) is attached to a shoulder harness of a seat belt, similarly to the shoulder pad described in Japanese Patent No. 4796049, and is placed between the shoulder harness and a shoulder of an occupant at the time of use. The shoulder pad is configured such that a friction-increasing surface provided on a shoulder-harness side is engaged with a shoulder strap at the time of a crash, so as to increase a frictional resistance to the shoulder harness, thereby limiting a forward movement of the occupant.
The shoulder pad described in Japanese Patent No. 4796049 may give uncomfortable feeling of roughness to the occupant, because the plurality of projecting portions makes contact with the shoulder of the occupant. Further, since a pressure receiving area is small, there is room for improvement in terms of improvement of an occupant restraint performance at the time of a vehicle crash.
In the meantime, the shoulder pad described in JP2003-276559 A has a large thickness, and is not provided with a deflection structure. On that account, it is considered that the shoulder pad makes local contact with the shoulder of the occupant at normal time. As a result, the occupant may receive a sense of being oppressed, and there is room for improvement in terms of improvement of comfortability.